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A muscle and bone doctor who specializes in healthy aging shared her weekly workout routine, which helps her maintains strength and mobility as she ages.
Dr. Vonda Wright, 57, is a Florida-based, double-board-certified orthopedic surgeon, who helps elite athletes, including Olympians and World Rugby Sevens players, optimize their performance.
In our 30s and 40s, we naturally start to lose muscle mass, which is crucial for continuing to do everyday movements, such as standing up from a chair. The process picks up between the ages of 65 and 80.
It's important to stay active to prevent our bones and muscles from weakening, and those who lead a sedentary life with eventually lose strength and balance and start to topple over or shuffle when they walk, Wright told Business Insider.
Around 12% of US adults older than 50 have osteoporosis, and 43% have low bone mass, a precursor to osteoporosis, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But exercising greatly decreases the risk, Wright said
"Musculoskeletal aging and healthy aging is a lifelong pursuit," she said. "Just show up every day for yourself."
The "critical decade" for people to start developing habits that will allow them to live healthy, active lives into old age is between the ages of 35 and 45, said Wright, the author of "Fitness After 40,"
"70 to 80% of how we age is due to the lifestyle choices," Wright said.
With that in mind, she exercises five to six days a week, including cardio and strength training.
Wright recommends that everyone learns to lift weights to build and maintain muscle mass.
She is a fan of powerlifting, which consists of deadlifts, bench presses, and squats. She does four sets of four reps of each and ensures she challenges herself with heavy weights.
"I can do four with good form. I'm exhausted. I may be able to do five, but I cannot do six. If I can do that, it's too light, and I need to go up," she said.
Alongside these, she does some accessory lifts, which are targeted at individual or smaller muscle groups, typically focusing on her biceps, triceps, lats, and deltoids. She does four sets of eight reps.
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When it comes to aerobic exercise, Wright follows the 80/20 rule, meaning she does low-intensity training, also known as zone 2 training, 80% of the time and high-intensity training the remaining 20%.
Research suggests this approach builds endurance and improves cardiovascular health.
"For everyone, the very beginner runner to the most elite athlete, longer runs where you're maintaining a low heart rate are really beneficial for building aerobic endurance," Dr. Morgan Busko, a sports medicine physician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, previously told BI. "By running slower for longer periods, you're setting yourself up to be able to run faster."
Wright typically runs on a treadmill for 45 minutes at about 60% of her maximum heart rate, and twice a week, she ends with some speed training. She sprints as fast as she can for 30 seconds four times.
"When you sprint like that and you really push yourself, no matter what age you are, you kind of feel like a badass," she said.
To maintain bone density, everyone needs a jumping practice, Wright said, particularly if you sit at a desk all day. This can be jumping off a box, jumping rope, or even running up the stairs hard, she said.
She does box jumps between lifts twice a week and gets up from her desk and jumps up and down 20 times during the day. "My patients are used to seeing me jump around," she said.
In a 2009 study published in the journal Sports Health: A Multidisciplinary Approach, Wright and her colleagues measured the bone density of 560 senior athletes with an average age of 65.9. They found that those who did high-impact sports, such as volleyball, basketball, and running, had the highest bone density.
When a person has low bone density their risk of breaks and fractures, as well as osteoporosis, increases.
